The Bronze Bust of Isaac Newton.
Michael Rysbrack
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Assumed to be lot 74 in the Rysbrack sale catalogue 20 April 1765.
see extract below.
I have posted previously photographs of this bust very kindly provided to me by Victoria Avery of the Fitzwilliam Museum - here are my photographs.
This bust - has been on loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge from Trinity College, Cambridge since 2004.
Formerly in the collection of O.V. Watney of Cornbury Park, sold at Christie's on 22 May 1967, together with a bronze bust of Oliver Cromwell (lot 6), bought by Humphrey Whitbread (1912 - 2000) both bequeathed to Trinity - Cromwell formerly on loan to the Cecil Higgins Museum, Bedford.
This bust - has been on loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge from Trinity College, Cambridge since 2004.
Formerly in the collection of O.V. Watney of Cornbury Park, sold at Christie's on 22 May 1967, together with a bronze bust of Oliver Cromwell (lot 6), bought by Humphrey Whitbread (1912 - 2000) both bequeathed to Trinity - Cromwell formerly on loan to the Cecil Higgins Museum, Bedford.
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Oliver Cromwell
By Michael Rysbrack
Bronze
Height 58.4 cms
Very low resolution website photograph of the bust of Oliver Cromwell from Christie's online catalogue for 5 April 2001
Extract from the text from Christie's Catalogue.
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/Lot/a-bronze-bust-of-oliver-cromwell-by-2016690-details.aspx
It corresponds exactly to a terracotta version,
today in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (illustrated in Baker, op.
cit., fig. 104), which seems to have been bought by Rysbrack's patron, Sir
Edward Littleton, in one of Rysbrack's sales of the late 1760s (14 February 1767,
lot 61). In another of these sales (Langford and Son, 1765, op. cit.), lots 74
and 75 are listed as bronze busts of Cromwell and Newton. The present bust,
which was sold together with a pendant bust of Newton in 1967 (Christie's; The
remaining contents of Cornbury Park, Charlbury, Oxfordshire, sold by order of
the Trustees and Beneficiaries of the Late O.V. Watney, Esq.) therefore almost
certainly represents the bust of Cromwell which was sold from Rysbrack's own
sale in the 18th Century.
"Although
the appearance of the present bust, with the pendant bust of Newton, is first
recorded with certainty in the collection of O.V. Watney, there is an
interesting possibility that it passed to him from the collection of the Earls
of Portsmouth. Watney's mother, Lady Margaret, was a daughter of the 5th Earl
of Portsmouth. In the 18th Century the Portsmouths had acquired, by marriage to
a great-niece of Sir Isaac Newton, Rysbrack's celebrated marble version of the
bust of Newton mentioned above, along with a number of other Newton-related
items . It is therefore possible that the Portsmouths had, at one time, also
owned the bronze version of the bust of Newton - along with the present bust of
Cromwell - and that the two passed through the family to Watney through his
mother".
For the complete Rysbrack catalogue see -
http://english18thcenturyportraitsculpture.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-rysbrack-sale-catalogue-saturday-20.html

Oliver Cromwell
Huntington Library, California
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The Possible Sources for Rysbrack's busts of Oliver Cromwell.

Oliver Cromwell
after Peter Lely
John Faber
338 x 276 mm
Illustrations to Pecks Memoires of Cromwell, 1740
British Museum
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
Oliver Cromwell
after Samuel Cooper
George Vertue
for Rapin de Thoyras History of England
1736.
300 x 192 mm
British Museum

Oliver Cromwell
After Samuel Cooper
R Sheppard
Engraving
375 x 230 mm.
1733
British Museum
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
Oliver Cromwell
After Robert Walker
John Bullfinch
Mezzotint
275 x 193 mm.
Probably early 18th century
British Museum
______________________________________

Oliver Cromwell
After Robert Walker
Jan van de Velde IV
400 x 304
Mezzotint
c. 1660
British Museum
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
Oliver Cromwell
after Walker
badly engraved by Richard Gaywood
154 x 107 mm
1653
Etching
British Museum

Oliver Cromwell
After Robert Walker
Richard Gaywood
c.1653
Engraving
142 x 107
British Museum

Oliver Cromwell
After Robert Walker
Richard Gaywood
90 x 59mm
British Museum
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
Oliver Cromwell
after Robert Walker
Bernard Picart
210 x 156 mm
1724
British Museum
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